Week 9, thingy 23-- HOORAY!

This has been excellent! I'm so glad to have been exposed to all these possibilities. Some I will use more than others, but it's mostly great to be familiar with (and slightly conversant about)what everything is. I guess the best thing is to have created and maintained a blog. The most fun was making the avatar. One thing I'm wondering: If we want to go back and find all these resources, will the 23 things be available for a long time? The links and podcasts were very helpful and I'd like to be able to go back to them. Thanks very much for all your monitoring, and for making this available! Yes, I would participate in such a thingy again. MEOW!

Week 9, thingy 22

That was an eye-opener! I have to admit I had never looked at the OverDrive option on the BCPL site. I learned some useful things: it's easy, there's a good selection, AND you can copy to a CD. I never new that and now that I do, there's a good chance I will use it. It would take a little planning ahead before a long car trip, for example, but might be worth it. I looked at 'Humor & Essays" because that's the type of thing I like to listen to in the car. Found a Dave Barry and a PGWodehouse title.

Week 9, thingy 21

Ask a Ninja was great! I haven't done much with podcasts before, don't have an ipod, and am not subscribed to itunes. But I did look at podcast.net. I like the arrangement of categories to click down into, like yahoo! But I looked at learning & instruction/ reference and there were a lot of religions podcasts there-- not what I expected to find, but I'm sure that's how they were tagged by the people who posted them. Looked at things tagged with 'library' and added the Hennepin Co. Library Teen Links podcasts to my Bloglines account. As with YouTube, I'm not sold on the usefulness until I have seen more professional uses vs. entertainment.

More Week 9, thingy 20

I guess YouTube might be the part of the 23 things with which I was already the most familiar. It's fun to see 1970's commercials and library dominoes. But the experience I have with it has always been for fun. I think a lot of people have a lot of spare time to be filming pytons eating rabbits (horrors!), but I'm sure there must be some educational uses for it, too.

Week 9, thingy 20: Best Cats Compilation Ever

Why not this YouTube video for Cats Meow?

Week 8, thingy 19

Feeling like the horse headed toward the barn now....
It was great to see the list of the winners, including many of the sites we have visited. The one I chose to look at was the winner in 'Events.' It's a yahoo site called Upcoming. The first page lists popular places, with the most popular listed in the largest font (like aquabrowser). United States was the largest. Finding my way to a search for what's going on in Baltimore wasn't totally easy. Once I found the 72 events listed for Baltimore, I could see how this could be useful-- once more people and organizations start to use it to list their events. The Md. Zoo and Parks and People Foundation, and the Orioles, among others, have their events listed. So I will check back in a few months to see how robust the listings are. Once you find an event at a venue you like, you can click on that venue to find all others there. But I was ticked when I clicked on yahoo!maps to get a map of the location and couldn't 'back' button back to the event listings.

Week 8, thingy 18

VERY, VERY cool! The post below this one, a bit of Daffodils by Wordsworth, was created in Google docs, then I published it from there to my blog. The entire experience of signing up, making a document, and publishing it was extremely easy. It's all totally intuitive-- especially because many of the icons are the same as MS Word's! Besides, by this time in the 23 thingys, we are becoming fearless-- just try something and see if it works!

Daffodils, by Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills

When all at once I saw a crowd

A host of golden daffodils

Beside the lake, beneath the trees

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Week 7, thingy 17

Now that I have posted stuff on 2 different wikis (I put the Most Borrowed report link on the ccd wiki a couple of times a month), I feel very comfortable with the process. I think the PB Wiki is more user-friendly than the ccd one, actually. I put my blog under 'favorite blogs' and put a link to Rick Steves' travel web site under favorite web sites.

Week 7, thingy 16

Wow-- I learned a lot via the various resources, including what 'wiki' means in Hawaiian, that the first wiki was in 1995, and that there are lots of places you can house your wiki. When deciding on the best place, you should consider RSS-- a week ago I wouldn't have known what that meant! The resources listed in the resources are 2005 and older, so there's probably much more recent material out there.
I can see using wikis for lots of things including conventions. But I wonder if the level of knowledge and comfort with them is broad enough, or if some people still would go to the traditional web page information rather than participating in a wiki.
The SJCPL subject guides are nice-- guess the librarians all participate in making recommendations and the wiki is used by the public and by the librarians. If I were a libarian there, I would add a hobby section on gardening!
Library Success has a subject on Project Planning, but nothing on statistics except 'Demonstrating Impact, Value, and ROI.' Not much there, and it hasn't been updated since December 2006.

Week 6, thingy 15

Very interesting! 'The machine is us/ing us' was fascinating, creative, fun, and great music. I thought 'away from icebergs' was going to be about global warming, but it's about potential disasters. All 3 potential disasters are thought-provoking, especially no more 'just in case' collections because information is available in other media than print.
It was good to see a picture of blogger Michael Stephens after seeing his name so often. I especially liked what he said about meeting user needs, related to the needs assessment work we have been doing. And I like 'make good, fast decisions.'

Week 6, thingy 14

Well, it's so hot today that I'm not out in the garden. Technorati is pretty amazing, but I couldn't get the Technorati Tour video to run even after installing QuickTime. I did learn enough to decide not to do the tagging or claiming so my blog can be found more easily. I have already received an unsolicited email about making my blog more effective and since this blog is just for fun and practice, I don't want it to be found very easily.
ANYWAY, I did the 'learning 2.0' search in advanced search. Found 3630 results (including my posts) in the keyword search, but just 41 blog posts tagged with 'learning 2.0.' The blog directory had no blogs tagged with 'learning 2.0.' In the top searches, I wasn't surprised to see 'iphone' or 'Paris Hilton', but was curious about 'razultate.' Looks like an Italian or Spanish (one of those romance languages) place with soccer (football) scores? I was interested to see Post Secret in the top blogs and interested to learn the difference between top blogs and favorite blogs.

Week 6, thingy 13

I was convinced about the usefulness of del.icio.us during the podcast/video instruction when she gave an example of looking for articles for research, then following the tagging trail to other people and resources. The PLCMCL2 place had lots of resources about IM reference (for example) including links to libraries that do IM reference, related articles, and types of Im-ing software. Also there was a link to Learning 2.0 thoughts = people reflect on the experience. I checked out del.icio.us, searched for 'cat', and got 50,609 results including a site called 'cats in sinks.' It is one photo after another of cats in sinks-- why am I not surprised that there is such a place? Followed a couple of the other tags on the cat places (pets, funny) and got to all sorts of NOT cat-related places. Went back to the d home page looking for 'popular' places saved by lots of people and found an article on web copyright. Other tags appear on that article i.e. blog, law, rules, as do comments by other people who had been to this place.

Week 5, thingy 12

Let's see if this works. It isn't totally obvious on Rollyo how to make, save, and share. I finally found the sharing part under 'tools.' Here, maybe, is my Scandinavia Travel rollyo...
Shoot, I think I have to make it 'public' for it to show up. How do I do that? OK, you can do it under 'manage searchrolls.' Let me try that again...
THIS is my Scandinavia Travel rollyo...
DONE! As my Scandinavia trip approaches and I am gathering information, I can search all these sites at once!

Week 5, thingy 11

What a lovely way to spend some of Friday afternoon-- exploring and having FUN! Library Thing is neat. Not sure if I will use it, but another wonderful discovery of what's 'out there.'

Here's a link to my catalog

Week 5, thingy 10 avatar

So that was fun. I found the overall outfit, the hat, the garden background, and the cat!

More Week 5, thingy 10

I can't believe I found this to put on my blog! This is one of my all-time favorites, and how appropriate for Cats Meow! It was in Profile Pitstop in FlashPix Generator.

Week 5, thingy 10

Here's my first attempt at this-- I have always liked to scribble with different types of letters. Remember writing in elementary or high school in the big fat letters that overlapped? OK, I'm dating myself! This was done in Your gen text generator. I had to register/ sign up to get to the code to copy/paste into the html tab of this blog. [USEFUL HINT to people who don't know about the html tab. ] Let's see what else I can find.

I've Been Tagged-- oh, boy!

I was tagged by d's Blog. Here's how it works: Each player lists 8 facts/habits about themselves. The rules of the game are posted at the beginning before those facts/habits are listed. At the end of the post, the player then tags 8 people and posts their names, and then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged, and asking them to read your blog to find out how it works!
Here are facts from Cats Meow:
1. You can tell that I have 2 cats named Gladys and Aretha, as in Knight and Franklin.
2. I grew up in Baltimore, lived in other cities for 30 years, and happily moved back home 6 years ago.
3. This is my 7th summer in this house and the garden is a joy-- it has finally grown to be 'mine.'
4. There is always room in the garden for another plant or 2 or 10.
5. Travel is my favorite activity. This summer: Scandinavia and St. Petersburg.
6. I got my affection for numbers and financial analysis from my father.
7. I am the oldest child of two oldest children. (Birth order is very interesting)
8. I have a 14-year-old nephew and just finished checking the website for the camp where he's spending the summer for photos of him-- I found two!
Now it's your turn: I tag FourCatsOnly, Cats at Home, Sewing Sassy, ScrappinErin, New Gardener, Kaleebcpl, Jem and Scout, and Its gLORIous.

Week 4, thingy 9

Hey, that was fun! What a huge world of search places! I tried different searches in each one except for Syndic8 which was TOO slow coming up so I went on to the others. Tried searching 'library' in Feedster and there were many listings, all over the map. Tried 'maryland''library' and didn't get anything. Hey, is BCPL going to do a blog? Also tried 'baltimore county' and found interesting news. In Topix I entered my zip code and got some news, but nothing I would want to have in addition to the Baltimore Sun which is already in my Bloglines. In Technorati, I had fun searching stuff to do with 'cat' or 'cats.' In searching 'cat' videos, there was one of Cat Stevens!
I did look at Merlin again-- it keeps getting better!

Week 4, thingy 8

Hooray! I feel that I have gone over a hurdle. After reading other folks' posts about the RSS thingy, I was a little worried, but it was a breeze! All the information (videos, palinet screens, c-net) was helpful. The only thing I wondered about was whether palinet's, from 2005, would be outdated. I was also concerned about finding 10 places to add, but once I reached npr's site, they have list of possible rss feeds that's like being in a candy shop-- you can do feeds of news stories, shows, or particular topics. I also added bluffingwildly's garden blog and hope to see some new posts about how the garden is looking now!

Week 3, thingy 7

Wow, there's lots of latitude on this one. Here's one for you: I feel very much middle-generation. I showed my parents how to search for something on LLBean's web site this weekend. That's something I take very much for granted but it's a mystery to them. But my nephew is so many light years ahead of me!
Also, I saw that The Daily Show is available on i-Tunes. Now if only I had an Ipod-- more of being in the middle generation.
Finally, NPR had an interesting story this morning about protecting your on line reputation. It's incredible and wonderful that I can give you this link and you can listen to it.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11159611
Now off I go to do a comment on someone else's blog.

Week 3, thing 6

OK, guys, this is getting addictive. I thought I would be doing it only at home, but I decided...oh, well, just one this afternoon.
Mashup-- what a neat name. But once I started looking at the API documentation, I got overwhelmed and went to play elsewhere (remember that important learning habit 'play'?)
I LOVE the Color Pickr-- just because it was fun to see all the possibilities with each color. I also liked the comment of Alex Soojung-Kim Pang on that page i.e. this is either a great thing or a so-what thing.
Did you know that there are over a million cat pictures in the Montag-r? pdx_librarian had some cute pictures of a cat named Phoebe. Then I went back and found that there are over 1000 photos with tags of 'Phoebe' and 'cat' AND that if you just look for 'phoebe' tag you find pictures of the bird as well.
I also made a blog header in the Blog Header generator in Flickr Toys.
Yikes, I'd better get back to work!

Week 3, thing 5

Well, Jim had told me about Flickr and it looks great. I was very interested in the 150 most common tags, and the way the font size of the words on the list reminded me of Aquabrowser. Then I found myself getting lost in the 'most interesting photos.' I went to the ones from the last 7 days, then because it was hot today, I decided to look at photos from December 2006-- looking for photos of snow. Instead, I found this yummy photo:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/belochkavita/320657769/
Isn't that wonderful with the crumbs and pieces of cranberry falling off?
The tagging convention blog on the Flickr site is interesting, too, but as with many blogs, the participants sure get into some inane 'arguments.'

Idea for Jim and Ellen

Hi there! The Account Reference Sheet is neat. Just a thought: you might want to add a line for each account to note what kind of account it is, or what the account is for-- for example, the account with Google is for the blog. p.s. I hope you aren't reading this over the weekend-- but I figured out that home is the best place to work on the 23 things!

Week 1, thing 2: The 7.5 Effective Habits

It was really helpful to read someone else's blog because he/she reminded me that I'm supposed to write about the easiest and hardest of the 7.5 habits. The easiest is a no-brainer: play, play, play! I'm all for it! I take all my vacation and personal days, love life, then work hard while I'm at work. The hardest habit was a little tougher to decide on, but I would say viewing problems as challenges. It's too easy to have problems seem overwhelming instead of remembering that when I've been confronted with them in the past, it's all turned out fine and I have usually learned something from the experience.

Week 2, things 3 and 4

Woah! I seems I might have just created a blog. That's pretty amazing! I registered it also, will watch for 'CatsMeow' to show up on the participants page and I will do blog posts for future activities-- promise!